Bernard P. Wolff

Wolff became interested in film, photography and graphic design at an early age. He was Henri Langlois’s assistant at the Cinémathèque Française and left Paris for New York in 1958. He worked there as a graphic designer and then as a photographer, first for conferences, soon for portraits, landscapes and mainly street scenes.

During the following years, he traveled to Africa, South-America and India, for the UNO or the UNICEF. His photos were good but under the influence of his sketcher education. But in 1974, while attending a photo training course by Charles Harbutt, he – in his own words – suddenly understood how to take a picture.

He left for another trip to India in 1975, took part in several exhibitions in New York and Paris, visited Portugal, Spain, Italy and France in 1977. His pictures were published in the New York Times, the Herald Tribune, Modern Photography, Zoom, Photo, Photo Magazine and others.

Most Wolff’s B&W pictures that were published have been taken “live” in the streets (with his discreet Leica), or are portraits. He was fascinated by people on the edge, countries like India or Japan, or cities like New York or London, where everything is possible.

His pictures are focused on men, and they talk to the heart as well as to the eye. They contain joy, despair, friendship, pride, madness, beauty and ugliness, often a real sense of humor and a kind of poetry.